Products are commonly produced on high speed manufacturing lines. For instance, some beer bottlers report filling line speeds in excess of 650 bottles per minute. At such high speed, the inertia of the moving parts of the manufacturing line and the containers being moved and filled can be a critical factor to design of the filling line.
As products move down a manufacturing line, it is not uncommon to have a need to divert a particular product from the main stream of products being manufactured. For instance, on a container labeling and filling line, the label on a particular container may be defective. The line may be equipped to detect defective labels by employing a vision system or other type of defect detection system. Once a defective label is detected, the line may timely activate a diversion apparatus to divert the container having a defective label out of the stream of articles that are destined for final packaging and distribution. Another defect that occasionally occurs is that the article of manufacture does not have the proper weight or a container filled with product does not have the correct weight. Such underweight products or filled containers may need to be separated from products that ultimately end up in the market so as to avoid disappointing the end consumer.
At high line speeds, the process of diverting a product needs to occur in a fraction of a second. Further, once the particle is diverted, the apparatus diverting the defective product must get out of the way of other products upstream of the defective product so that upstream products are not impeded. With these limitations in mind, there is a continuing unaddressed need for a diversion apparatus that can be used on high speed manufacturing lines.